


The Word Made Flesh

by amberfox17



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Kink Meme, M/M, Norse Myths & Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 14:05:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/749359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberfox17/pseuds/amberfox17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the Vikings kink meme prompt: Loki's favored one (Floki) mentioned his friend recently acquiring a slave who does not believe in him. But more importantly, Floki said this priest was pretty. I want to see Loki approach Athelstan when he's alone and set the record straight on the existence of gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Word Made Flesh

It is high summer and the days are long in the north. Ragnar, Lagertha and the children are somewhere high in the woods on the clifftop, making an offering to the _landvaettir_ , the spirits of the land and the forest. Gyda asked, shyly, if he would join them, but he had to decline: it is one thing to observe the practises of heathens and quite another to be part of them. Athelstan no longer thinks of himself as a monk at heart, but he is still a Christian, and the worshipping of idols and piles of stones is something he just cannot bring himself to do. So Ragnar and Lagertha chose to leave him alone on the farm, a sign of trust and faith in his competency, two things that please him more than they should.

The day’s work was done before the family set off for the sacred grove, for the north people are ever practical, even in their worship. It is an unexpected and unfamiliar pleasure to have an afternoon with nothing to do, for the days of both monk and slave leave little time for relaxation. Athelstan strolls along the shoreline, delighting in the absence of work. The day is hot and the waters inviting, and since everyone but Athelstan is observing the rites in the forest he soon feels confident enough to strip his clothes off and plunge in.

He bobs in the water, floating lazily in the shallows, and feels his heart lift at the sudden sense of freedom.

“It is a fine day, is it not?” comes a voice over the water.

Athelstan startles and flounders in the water, trying to get his feet underneath him. As soon as he can stand he looks for the owner of the strange voice and sees a man standing on the shore watching him. A sudden fear grips him and he looks around frantically for the man’s companions, for his weapons, for proof that this is a raid. There is none: no fires burn, no-one shouts, and the stranger on the shore has no axe, no sword, not even a knife.

“You need not fear,” the man calls, laughing. “I only wish to speak with you. Floki has often spoken of Ragnar’s Christian priest, and I wished to see you for myself.”

A friend of Floki? Athelstan relaxes a little, although he is still wary. He is naked and alone, an unsafe state for an unfree man in these lands.

“Come, priest,” the man says smiling and without quite meaning to Athelstan obeys. He walks out of the water, awkward and shy, for although the north people are unashamed by nudity it is hard for him to forget the ways of the monastery.

He stands before the stranger, shivering and wet. The man looks him over slowly and deliberately, and Athelstan cannot help the hot flush of embarrassment that creeps over his pale skin. The other man is tall, taller even than Ragnar’s friend Erik, and strikingly handsome. He is clean-shaven, with sharp, defined features and a wicked mouth, somehow feminine and yet not, with a mass of thick red hair intricately braided and adorned with silver. Redheads are far more common in these northern lands than they were in Northumbria, but this man’s colouring is unusual even here, a rich, bright red like fire, like blood.

The man steps closer, uncomfortably close, and stares into Athelstan’s face. His eyes are strange, the colour impossible to pin down, seemingly now blue, now grey, now green, changing like water as the light hits them. There is something terribly, wonderfully _wrong_ in his beauty, and Athelstan is frozen in place as the man runs a long-fingered hand down his face.

“Do you not know me, little priest?” asks the man and Athelstan cannot answer. “Your people worshipped me once, before the Dead God’s followers spread their poison through the White Land. Your father’s father’s father once trembled at my name, and in your lands I once gave my blessings to those cunning enough to seek them. I am Loki, little priest, wolf-father, sky-walker, the Sly One, the Breaker of Worlds.”

“Loki is not real,” Athelstan manages, trying desperately to move, but managing only to tremble. “There is only one God, and -”

The man claiming to be Loki smiles cruelly. “Do I not feel real to you, Athelstan, son of Athelred?” he asks mockingly, looming over Athelstan, running his hands over his exposed flesh, the lingering dampness sizzling away beneath the unnatural heat of his fingers. This is not a man, Athelstan thinks frantically, and wishes for his cross, left on the pile of his clothes.

“You are a demon!” he gasps, his whole body tingling as the hot hands sweep across him, stroking his chest, his back, the curve of his hip. It is becoming hard to breathe and he feels dizzy, almost drunk. He sways on his feet and slumps forward, head resting against Loki’s chest.

“I have been called worse,” murmurs Loki, his hands moving lower, caressing Athelstan’s buttocks, his navel, the tangled hair of his crotch. Athelstan whimpers; the pleasure is rising up in him like a tide, making it hard to think, hard to fear, his whole world contracting to the sheer overwhelming _presence_ before him.

 “They say that the White Christ demands his worshippers kneel before him,” Loki continues, running the tip of just one finger along Athelstan’s rapidly hardening length. “But I would rather have you on your back so I can see your pretty face.”

“I have sworn a vow of chastity,” Athelstan slurs, the words difficult to shape, the protest skittering away even as Loki lays him down on the shore.

“You may have sacrificed your flesh to your god,” Loki whispers as he settles over Athelstan, suddenly, inexplicably naked, “but he has not claimed it, nor has he given you anything in return for it. I offer a much better bargain: give yourself to me and I will keep you safe in the palm of my hand. Chaos has already swallowed you up, little priest; is it not better to soar on the wind than to be knocked down by it?”

I don’t understand, Athelstan wants to say, but all that comes out is a moan as he clutches at the hot body pressed against him. He cannot follow what is happening to him as Loki kisses him, his slippery tongue forcing its way in to Athelstan’s mouth yet somehow also wrapped around his cock. There is a touch on his thighs, between his legs, and yet Loki’s hands are tight in his hair: it is impossible, what he is feeling, and when he forces his eyes open Loki’s face seems to blur, seems to slide into Ragnar’s, Lagertha’s, Floki’s, a beautiful woman and then a handsome man, the eyes always the same, flickering, burning, holding him in place.

Athelstan is burning, his body swallowed up by heat and lust and fire, his hips jerking as he is breached, split open and yet swallowed up, wet heat surrounding his erection and pushing into him as he moans and begs and pleads. His hands grasp tight at slick flesh, smooth feathers and thick fur; he feels as if he is being torn apart and remade with every shuddering breath, every spike of white-hot pleasure. It is too much, far too much, and he is dying, he is coming, he is shattering into a thousand jagged pieces and he plunges into silence and stillness and knows no more.

When he wakes it is to the sound of Ragnar shouting his name. Athelstan sits up, sticky and sore and still naked. His clothes are folded neatly beside him, but his cross is gone, replaced by what looks like a wolf’s tooth on a leather thong. He stares at it blankly, proof that he has not gone mad and imagined the whole thing.

The hand on his shoulder makes him start.

“Athelstan?” Lagertha says gently, her concern obvious. Behind her, Ragnar’s hands are gripping his axe so tightly his knuckles are bone white. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he says after a moment, for although he is sore and confused, he is not bleeding, is not bruised, and his memories are of pleasure, not pain.

“Who did this to you?” snarls Ragnar, ferocious in his anger.

Athelstan stares at them, wondering how to answer.

“Loki,” he says, and is surprised when this seems to satisfy them, before remembering that for them, the heathen gods are an ever-present part of the world, watching over them, and guiding them in times of trouble. Lagertha is sworn to Freyja and invokes the goddess daily; Ragnar speaks of his visions with the same surety as he speaks of the day’s farming, and even claims that he is descended from the high god Odin.

Ragnar visibly relaxes, lowering his axe, and Lagertha pulls him into a brief hug before helping him with his clothes.  She hands him the wolf’s tooth necklace by the cord, careful not to touch the tooth itself. Athelstan holds it in his hand but does not put it on.

“Come,” Ragnar says, and they take him home, their arms wrapped around his waist, their trust and faith a solid shield against the darkness and the chaos that threatens to swallow Athelstan whole, the wolf’s tooth a small sharp pain held in the palm of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Full prompt: Loki's favored one (Floki) mentioned his friend recently acquiring a slave who does not believe in him. But more importantly, Floki said this priest was pretty. 
> 
> I want to see Loki approach Athelstan when he's alone and set the record straight on the existence of gods. There can be smut if you like and preferably a terrified Athelstan at some point.
> 
> Loki can look however you want, Marvel!Loki or another kind (my image of him was always the redhead from the mythology picture book I read when I was like five). I kinda want to see him be very tactile with Athelstan, just to re-enforce the fact he's real and there. (Translation: I want trailing fingers and creepy face touching.)
> 
> I'm well aware I've wandering off base a bit with this, and it's probably not quite what the OP had in mind, but it was a great opportunity to write myth!Loki. If you like visual aids, I tend to picture myth!Loki as a mixture of Tilda Swinton (http://balphesian.tumblr.com/post/42686424173 and http://hi-imginger.tumblr.com/post/3166052087/tilda-swinton) and this amazing doll (http://madam-b.tumblr.com/post/42180141175/loki-laufeyjar-sonr-bjd)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Word Made Flesh (The 21st Century Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/760930) by [amberfox17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amberfox17/pseuds/amberfox17)




End file.
